ENGAGEMENT PLATFORM

Smart Estates: Adapting to a Disrupted World Following the Opening Webinar, we are pleased to bring you our first research thematic webinar focusing on “Resilience”. This webinar will focus on the technologies and innovation for a resilient built environment – a topic of increasing importance as Singapore seeks to address the growing stock of aging infrastructure, raise productivity and adapt to climate change.

Green Transformation of Industries: A Tripartite Partnership Singapore aims to achieve long-term net zero carbon emission, peaking emissions level by 2030, and halving it by 2050. With these ambitious targets in mind, the public and private sectors will have to work closely hand-in-hand to introduce/implement green initiatives. Through this Sustainability-themed webinar, expert speakers from Government, Research Institutes and Industry will share insights and industry initiatives on decarbonisation.

The World Cities Summit is an exclusive platform for government leaders and industry experts to address liveable and sustainable city challenges, share integrated urban solutions and forge new partnerships. Since its inauguration in 2008, the biennial Summit has been attended by over 250 global cities and supported by leaders from government, business, international organisations and academia. Jointly organised by Singapore’s Centre for Liveable Cities and the Urban Redevelopment Authority, the World Cities Summit is held in conjunction with the Singapore International Water Week (SIWW) and the CleanEnviro Summit Singapore (CESG). Highlights of the Summit include the Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize, the WCS Mayors Forum and City Solutions Singapore.

Complexity Science for Resilient and Adaptable Cities Cities are facing increasingly unprecedented and complex challenges. Lifestyle patterns are constantly evolving; the operations of firms are changing with new technologies; existential challenges like climate change and pandemics are affecting cities’ resilience. We can no longer ignore the “black swans” or unknown unknowns that may disrupt our urban systems. This webinar session will focus on planning for resilient and adaptable cities, to achieve liveability, resource circularity and a healthy environment. The speakers will discuss some approaches or methods that have been applied to city resilience, and enhance the appreciation towards the use of complexity science in informing urban solutions.

The Science to Building Social Resilience The ongoing challenges from the pandemic, socio-economic inequality, and climate change have underlined the importance of social resilience in urban planning and governance. Social infrastructure, trust, and social capital, are key to building resilient and cohesive societies. Such societies are better able to withstand, recover and grow from stressors and shocks, and undertake consistent efforts to strengthen different segments of the community. The speakers will share and discuss the application of social science research and methods to help city leaders and decision-makers better understand and manage diverse societies, and develop targeted actions for building social resilience.

Nature in Cities for Urban Sustainability Cities are typically seen as being disconnected from nature. Yet in the face of unsustainable urbanization, biodiversity loss, and climate change, the role of nature has been increasingly recognized in enhancing social, ecological and climate resilience, as well as creating sustainable and liveable cities. Cities across the globe are increasingly working to integrate nature and biophilic designs into the urban landscape as a way of life.

Dealing with the deep uncertainty of sea level rise Impacts of climate change and sea-level rise, and what it means to Singapore

PUB x 500 Startups - Commercialisation Programme Demo Day Showcase of 6 water technology start-ups covering biomimetic membranes, nanofiltration technologies, drones and other cutting-edge water technologies

ABC Waters Seminar Discussion and sharing on how Active, Beautiful and Clean Waters (ABC Waters) Design concepts are brought to life from design to construction

Smarter and Greener: Transforming through Technology

WCS Smart Cities Workshop

Making Sense: Leveraging the Science of Cities

Planning for a Rainy Day: Climate-Ready Cities

The GEOSummit is and wants to continue to be an important networking event for the Swiss geo-sector, even under difficult conditions, and is intended to create added value for the participants in their everyday work.

Liveable and Sustainable Cities: Emerging Stronger The biennial World Cities Summit (WCS) is an exclusive platform for government leaders and industry experts to address liveable and sustainable city challenges, share integrated urban solutions and forge new partnerships. Jointly organised by Singapore’s Centre for Liveable Cities (CLC) and the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), key highlights of the Summit include the WCS Mayors Forum, the Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize and the WCS Young Leaders Symposium.

It is well known that the design of buildings and urban environments has a strong influence on our emotional state and experience. Urban places, in particular, are also typically experienced in various levels of human occupancy – depending on the time of day, places from main streets to parks, can be almost empty or bustling with pedestrians, patrons, residents and visitors. How does the presence of other people influence our subjective experience of places? Does the design of urban environments moderate the effects of social presence? Using multiple measurement of human emotions drawing from environmental psychology and neuroscience, we begin to understand how design and presence of people jointly modulate our experiences in cities. In this talk, I will present the conceptual background and findings from recent and ongoing work done as part of the FCL2 Cognition Perception and Behaviour in Urban Environments project and more recently the IntraCREATE SEED project ‘NICE’, and how this can contribute to the planning of future urban developments.

Building information is currently not treated as something valuable beyond its immediate scope of application. One of the reasons for this is the lack of a long term value proposition and/or clear pathways for generating revenue using building data. As a result, valuable building information is unavailable to interested individuals and data analytic companies. In order to monetise building data, it has to be first systematically generated or collected (e.g., during the construction phase of a building). Furthermore, building data must be maintained, curated and regularly updated to remain relevant and up-to-date as time passes. All this incurs costs and companies may not see the point of doing so beyond what is needed to achieve their immediate tasks at hand. Among other potential use-cases for building data assets, they may provide information about building components and their materials to entities that specialise in mining and recycling building materials, thus contributing to a circular building materials economy. Pathways for generating revenue would provide the necessary incentives to maintain and update data until the building is demolished (and possibly beyond). We believe that building data assets have a crucial role to play in the context of sustainable material flows in circular future cities. To this end we use tokenised data assets on a Blockchain as a tool to connect building owners with the consumers of building information, coordinate the activities of the built ecosystem and at the same time, maintain the economic incentives required to keep the wheels running

Following the global call for an ecological turn in art, architecture, and design, NTU CCA Ideas Fest III presents projects that engage, investigate, and aim to ensure food security on a healthy planet.

ETH Zurich hosts the Future Cities Laboratory Global Conference to share intermediate results of its ongoing research with a wider audience. The two-day conference features prominent keynote speakers and panel discussions, and an opportunity to interact directly with young researchers. A public exhibition showcases the results of the ongoing research activities. Bringing together science, design, engineering and governance, FCL Global actively promotes the development of more sustainable, resilient and inclusive cities, setting the stage for a more liveable urban future.

THOMAS PETER ETH Zurich, response by Stefana Parascho

Representations and Learning in Computer Aided Design

Prof. Dr Dirk Helbing will discuss and explore how decentralised solutions of self-​organisation helps to organise societies in a more resilient way. 

CARSON CHAN AND MATTHEW WAGSTAFFE Emilio Ambasz Institute, MoMA, response by Lydia Xynogala

Empowering Change: Special ETH Global Lecture for International Women's Day 2024

As you drive through the Gotthard massif, the landscape is constantly changing. You can see small villages along the way. Mountains and lakes characterize the panorama. What is particularly fascinating, however, is what lies beneath the Gotthard massif.

Machine learning and generative AI has become a game-changer for solving design problems. Besides well-known applications like drug discovery, machine learning can also greatly enhance AI-assisted design in architecture, civil and mechanical engineering.

ALEXANDER GIESCHE Schauspielhaus Zürich, in conversation with Tanja Saban, response by Gabrielle Schaad

Surrogate modelling is the creation of simplified approximations of more complex, higher order models. This talk will cover the various surrogate modelling methods developed in Dr Evins’ research group.

ORIT HALPERN Technische Universität Dresden, response by Tomás Bartoletti

DEBORAH COEN Yale University, response by Debjani Bhattacharyya

EVA HORN Universität Wien, response by Laurent Stalder

Participate with Data is a workshop that offers a framework for evidence-based participatory design by combining P!D’s established participatory design approaches with FCL’s open-source planning support tool “ur-scape”. Following the workshop, studio tours to FCL or P!D will be held (subject to selected workshop date).

Symposium on Building Integrated Photovoltaics in Singapore organized by the Powering the City Research Module, held on 15 October 2024.

Future Cities Laboratories (FCL) invites to discuss the role of Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) in the city, with talks, roundtable discussion, and networking.

A satellite conference of NetSci 2025 focusing on the intersection of mobility health and network science, co-organised by FCL Global.

The Science & Technology Sub-Committee of SwissCham Singapore invites you to a discussion on leveraging intra-preneurship and spin-offs as strategic approaches to foster innovation while maintaining corporate alignment. This event will explore how Swiss companies can empower teams or carve out ventures to develop ASEAN-specific solutions efficiently.

Applications for the joint MAS Urban and Territorial Design at ETH Zurich and EPFL close on March 31.

A networking event for people working in sustainability and AI co-organized by Climate Change AI (CCAI) and Future Cities Laboratory (FCL) Global, Singapore-ETH Centre.

As part of the Sessions on Territory (SoT) public lecture series, this session will explore how urban politics, practices, and public sector innovation intersect and evolve within new political terrains and discourses, with Markus Messen and Julio Paulos.

Visiting Professor Dr. Yue Ge will give a talk on "Smart Cities and Urban Resilience – A Central Florida Perspective." The presentation, followed by a discussion, is hosted by the Future Cities Lab and the SPUR research group. It will take place on 21 May at the FCL Conference Space (HIL H45.2) from 11:15 am to 12:30 pm.

We are pleased to announce that the Future Cities Laboratory (FCL) Global will participate in the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Carlo Ratti.

Future Cities Laboratory Global (FCL) will be showcased at the 2025 Time Space Existence exhibition through the work of the Dense and Green Cities module.

This panel discussion explores, what implications transitions to sustainable systems entail and how they can be designed to uphold principles of justice.

Hosted by the FCL Global research group Comparative Ecology of Cities (CEC), this symposium invites researchers, practitioners, and all interested stakeholders to a half-day of knowledge exchange on the critical relationships between urban patterns and urban functions around the world.

Join us to celebrate the completion of the Dense and Green Cities research and the launch of the book Dense+Green Urban Development.

Join us in shaping inclusive and sustainable cities through interactive side events at the ASEAN Sustainable Urbanisation Forum (ASUF) on 13–14 August 2025 in Kuala Lumpur.

Designing the human-machine interaction of remote assistance for highly automated vehicles

The City As Volume: Capturing Patterns of Space Use in Integrated Urban Developments with a Spatial Network Analysis Framework

Join us at the Urban Futures Symposium, an event celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Urban Energy Systems Laboratory at Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology. This symposium brings together researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to explore innovative strategies and ideas for the future of cities. Our team will be participating by hosting a workshop and showcasing our work in an exhibition, demonstrating our contributions to shaping sustainable urban landscapes.

Join us on 4 September at the National Design Centre for thought-provoking keynotes and panel discussions, followed by research presentations on 5 September at the CREATE Theatrette

How can communities turn data into action for more inclusive, vibrant places? Join our interactive workshop with @fcl.global and @colours.singapore and explore how ur-scape makes global-to-local data accessible for everyone.

Working on greenery but not sure which is the best way to measure it: NDVI, GVI, or other tools? Attend the presentation by visiting PhD student Jussi Torkko from the University of Helsinki, Finland, as he thoroughly investigates the different computational tools we use to measure greenery and how they differ from people’s perception, as well as the use and benefit of using LLMs for urban planning tasks.

FCL Global is participating alongside other projects from the Singapore-ETH Centre at SWITCH, Asia’s premier innovation festival, bringing together market leaders, entrepreneurs, creators, accelerators and investors from the Global innovation ecosystem.

The Second International Symposium of [SEA] The Sea-City Interface module brings together international speakers and module researchers to share and discuss knowledge and findings under the title of “Architectural + Urban x Intelligence + Sustainability”. Specifically, we operate across the architectural and the urban scale, and consider intelligence and sustainability as both methods and objectives to achieve the aims of the [SEA] The Sea-City Interface module.